Bruce Liu plays Ravel

The Philharmonia welcomes outstanding pianist Bruce Liu to Leicester.

Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G was inspired by the jazz he heard on a tour of the United States. Ravel frames a serenly beautiful Adagio with outer movements of carefree, effervescent energy. It’s the perfect showcase for the “magician’s fingers” (Le Monde) of Bruce Liu, winner of the 2021 International Chopin Piano Competition.

Tchaikovsky himself said that his Fifth Symphoy represented “a complete resignation before Fate”, but that hasn’t stopped it becoming a firm audience favourite. It opens with the sound of footsteps on the clarinet. A singing horn melody gives the second movement a more hopeful mood, but the fateful ‘footsteps’ theme returns in the third movement waltz, and triumphs in the stormy finale.

To open, Ryan Bancroft – another close collaborator of the Philharmonia – has chosen Britten’s Four Sea Interludes from his opera Peter Grimes. The opera is a compelling observation of gossip and prejudice in a close-knit fishing community whose lives are intertwined with the sea and the weather. The orchestra vividly depicts the difference faces of the sea, from dawn tranquility to a fearsome storm.